The partition of Arizona

"Baja Arizona" has been tossed about for a while to describe Southern AZ. I'd like to think it the more sober portion of Arizona, the one that put solidly Goldwater Republican Jim Kolbe in the house for eleven terms.

A friend just coined a new complement to this: Phoenix and environs as "Loco Arizona". Not a bad label for the portion of the state populated by geriatric immigrants from places like Ohio, Indiana, and the Chicago suburbs who come here, grow green lawns, and get upset over rattlesnakes, "dry heat", and Mexicans of any citizenship.

Should there be an Arizonan divorce? The problem with Baja Arizona is that it isn't just Kolbe territory. (I'd bring up Giffords, but she caved on the community rating mandate/high deductible ban bill). It also sends far-leftist union stooge Grijalva to the House cycle after cycle. And it's home to the U of A, the "Salt of the Earth Labor College", and the geriatric folks from back east whose political opinions come straight out of 1935, market abolitionism and all. Baja Arizona is Soviet Snowbirdistan.

SB 1070 probably isn't the big deal the Soviet Snowbirdistan types are making of it--that'll depend on whether or not police departments elect to violate Constitutional standards in its enforcement. (That isn't a given.) And recall that the tension between Arizona's lunatics makes AZ the eighth most liberal state in the Union. Without Phoenix, we'd be Massachusetts. And perhaps without Tucson, we'd be everything the San Franciscans and media whores are currently imagining we are.

But I do like "Loco Arizona". That should stick.